Early evidence suggests IMF programmes are maintaining long-term fiscal consolidation targets, while World Bank further continues Maximizing Finance for Development narrative amidst Covid-19 crisis.
Conditionality impacts
Conditionality
Analysis
The IMF’s role in the devastating impacts of Covid-19 – the case of Ecuador
IMF-backed austerity measures starved health sector prior to pandemic, yet Fund continues to prescribe devastating long-term fiscal consolidation.
Conditionality
News
UN holds Pakistan to account for IMF programme impacts on women
Concerns raised about IMF conditions pushing women back into poverty and informal work.
Conditionality
News
Uprising and discontent: Global protests erupt against IMF-backed policies
From Latin America to North Africa and the Middle East, governments experience backlash against IMF loan programmes and policy recommendations.
Conditionality
Analysis
IMF Ecuador agreement undermines workers’ rights
IMF programme raises questions over unconstitutional attack on workers' rights.
Conditionality
Analysis
Structural adjustment is dead, long live structural adjustment
As Fund publishes its first comprehensive review of conditionality since the financial crisis, questions arise about the Fund's capacity to create economic stability and the rise of structural conditions.
Conditionality
News
Civil unrest in Zimbabwe amid IMF Staff Monitored Programme
Fears of further clampdown on protesters emerge as Zimbabwe implements Fund-backed economic reforms.
Conditionality
Analysis
IMF framework on social spending out of step with international standards
Fund publishes social spending strategy, civil society deems outcome too little too late.
Conditionality
Background
Austerity and the right to health - the IMF’s role in expanding fiscal space for public spending
Notes from the Civil Society Policy Forum session on 10 April on the incoherence between IMF-backed austerity policies, via loan conditionality and policy advice, and the realization of the right to health.
Conditionality
Commentary
Strikes overturn wage cuts, but IMF blindness risks ruining Tunisia
General Secretary of Tunisia's largest trade union calls for an overhaul of the IMF's approach to bring about socially just expansionary policies, after strikes overturn IMF-backed wage bill
Featured briefings
4 October 2023
The Bretton Woods Observer: Autumn 2023
3 October 2023
Assessing the Bretton Woods Institutions’ legacy
New collection of critical essays by authors from MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa do a retrospective of the BWIs involvement in the region, and the legacy of BWIs-supported unjust and extractionist world economic order.
2 October 2023
Reconceptualising Special Drawing Rights as a tool for development finance
Briefing examines the shortcomings of the current SDRs allocation system and calls to reform SDRs to ensure their targeted, needs-based and equitable distribution.